EU to filesharers: we want to imprison you! The U.S. is considering similar measures. (Source: Dvorak.org)

Watch out Pirate Party members: the EU plans to ban free speech on piracy and send those who fileshare to prison. (Source: Gecko and Fly)

Britain has announced its opposition to the plan

A
UK Intellectual Property Office representative made an important
revelation to online publication ComputerActive, commenting,
"ACTA should not introduce new intellectual property laws or
offences. Instead, it should provide a framework to better enforce
existing law."

That stance is very significant as the EU
and U.S. governments, at the behest
of copyright holders in the music and video industry, are
pushing a treaty called
ACTA which allows its member states to adopt not only fines,
but prison time for those who fileshare.

Details of the plan
to criminalize filesharing just leaked thanks to a citizen advocacy
group La Quadrature du Net. The document, found here [PDF],
is entitled "ACTA Chapter 2 Criminal Provisions".

The
new proposal would criminalize "infringements that have no
direct or indirect motivation of financial gain" -- which
currently would be considered a petty civil offense in most
countries. The language about criminalization states "each
party shall provide for effective proportionate and dissuasive
penalties" to include "imprisonment and monetary
fines".

Britain's decision to back down from supporting
the most-extreme U.S. and EU proposed copyright enforcement measures
is a blow to these governments and the corporate lobbyists that
support them. Under the Obama and George W. Bush
administrations, the U.S. secretly
brokered the ACTA treaty without informing the general
public. The EU similarly cooperated in secret
negotiations.

Only recently were the some of the
terms revealed, in preparation for the measure to go before the U.S.
House and Senate and EU Parliament to become law. And as this
most recent leak, shows, there may be more than a few surprises in
store, in the form of still undisclosed proposals.

Britain has
also indicated that it would also likely decline to enforce the
provision against language "inciting and aiding" piracy.
That provision could impose criminal or civil fines for those who
write supportively about piracy, essentially silencing their free
speech. The U.S. is allegedly one of the nations considering
the measure.

A Netherlands court already ruled
against a newsgroup which had the locations of torrents
posted in plaintext -- a seemingly strange decision, considering
Google.com and other search engines provide direct links. Such
decisions to abridge free speech in the name of anti-piracy may be
only the first of many court battles to come.

Jérémie
Zimmermann, spokesperson for La Quadrature du Net comments,
"The ACTA agreement, by its opacity and undemocratic nature,
allows criminal sanctions to be simply negotiated. The leaked
document shows that the EU Member States are willing to impose prison
sanctions for non-commercial usages of copyrighted works on the
Internet as well as for ‘inciting and aiding’, a notion so broad
that it could cover any Internet service or speech questioning
copyright policies."

Previously published materials on
the ACTA bill also reveal that it creates a new kind of crime called
"imminent infringement" -- which could bring punishment to
those who haven't even infringed. An example of such a
thought-crime would be if you searched "torrent daft punk"
in Google. The U.S. and copyright holders argue that if it can
be shown you were thinking about committing piracy you've as much as
committed a crime already.

The music and film industry
continue to press towards their dream of one day having the bill of
copyright infringement be footed by citizens, to ban backup copies,
and ban free speech in support of piracy.

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Sorry, but I cannot agree with what you've said, or at least the last part.

I **cough** acquire media from various sources but for some reason, over the last year, have decided to 'buy' the music and games that I want. Sure, I know where the movies are, for free, plus the music, but I'd prefer to give something back. (Even if the original artist gets a tiny amount)

I know people that simply get every movie they want each weekend and have no intention of buying, ever. I know a person who sits next to me that owns over 17,000+ albums and gets them as he wants to increase his album number.

I use steam to get most of my games and DRM, so far, hasn't caused my gaming pc one problem (I would prefer no DRM but I have a CHOICE)

If you want something, then you should damn well pay for it, full stop.

There is NO excuse for piracy and this is from someone that has... sampled.

quote: There is NO excuse for piracy and this is from someone that has... sampled.

I agree however that does not mean I agree with how many of the right holders are handling the issue. I can see how many people are so offended by their tactics that they fell justified to obtain pirate copies in pure spite.

Here are some of the issues I have with how most of the industry has chosen to conduct them self:

- Calling taking a copy "stealing" and trying to say it is like stealing a car, a TV and so on. To me that is simply stupid.

- Making insane claims on how much damage piracy does. Firstly one pirate copy does not equal one lost sale and secondly their loss is not the number of copies not sold multiplied by the retail price of said items. If loss was equal retail price then shops having a sale would be "stealing" money from the right holders.

- The many obstructions consumers must live with due to "pirate protection" of which some are really not to stop pirating but to enable price control between regions of the world. Many "protections with what is fair use and adds costs. Be it HDCP, audio CD's that are not really Audio-CD's, regional coding and so on. Another example would be movie DVD's on which you must view whatever messages and sometimes even trailers before you get to the content you bought.

- The whole notion that so little of what I pay in a shop goes to the artist which created the product I bought.

- There is only so many times a person will buy the same product. Of course music sales would decline after the boom created by people re-buying their LP's as CD's.

- And finally the fact that the industry uses piracy, real and imaginary, as an excuse for their business decline. In any other industries a changing world something which is dealt with. The companies making model air plane kits are loosing sales because there are more ways of entertainment to choose from. But the music and movie industry choose to blame piracy for everything rather than acknowledging many spend less on movies and music because they choose to spend money on other things.

quote: - Calling taking a copy "stealing" and trying to say it is like stealing a car, a TV and so on. To me that is simply stupid.

Well call me stupid. Here is a better example to why they call it stealing; You walk into Best Buy, take a cd/dvd off the shelf and just walk out the door. So when the cops come and arrest you, you can just tell them "I wasn't stealing, I just took a copy."Just because you don't have a physical copy doesn't make it any less than stealing.

Your second point on the damage piracy does is only half baked. The first part of the one to one is a reasonable statement, but your evidential last sentence doesn't really support the first in that a sale is an agreed upon, voluntary reduction of profit by the store. Making a copy is not agreed upon.

Your other statements are all in themselves correct, but their correctness does not give you rights to make unauthorized copies.

I gotcha. You subscribe to the try before you buy, but I would be that most people downloading torrents are just doing the trying, but not the buying.

So, what do you call it when you take something without permission? Since you did say you were taking a copy.

With your statement that taking is not stealing just because what you took is not tangible, then how is that different than electronically taking money from someone else's bank account. Its all just blips in the "tubes".

If you take a copy and keep it, then you have taken from the recording industry and the retailer that would have sold you that copy. Heck, all you are ever buying is a copy anyway.

Stealing implies an incurred loss. There is no way to prove that people who pirate would have went out and bought any of this to begin with. Therefore one cannot make a rational argument that the industry is loosing money here. We have a dollar theater in my town where movies that are too old for the mainline but not old enough for dvd release are played. When i am bored I go and watch some of the films. What I find is that 90% of what is coming out now isn't worth the cost of viewing or the cost of the dvd purchase. Some I have seen aren't even worth the $1 admission cost. The people who really like the films will buy them. The convenience of the dvd and the nice packaging are pluses. But when the movie industry gets bent out of shape when film X doesn't do as well as they want, and they find some people doing essentially the dollar movie rout, but with their computers, corporate greed is involved. the same applies to the music industry. Most music isn't worth buying and when the radio which has a limited selection is the main way to find out about new music, something has to give.

The entertainment industry is relying on an old and obsolete model and they are too stubborn/big to notice or care. Our governments are corrupt enough to enforce their unreasonable demands and persecute its own citizens. This can't last forever, while most pirates are of the younger generation, eventually they will come of voting age and either vote in someone who doesn't bend over to the recording industry, or they will enact change violently. Right now there is little reason to stop pirating and, these habits are unlikely to die as people get older.

Please! So you are saying that because these people would not have paid for it in the first place, they should then have the right to steal it? Or to flip it around, They are not stealing it because they were not going to pay for it anyway?

If you are not going to pay for something, physical or digital, and the owner of that something has not given you permission to take it, take a copy of it, then you have stolen it.

And I'm not sure where you are coming from about the entertainment industry delivery model. Today, you can download non-DRM encoded music from at least Amazon and iTunes.

I think you've missed the point. The "taking a copy" issue is referring to a situation where someone might PURCHASE a CD or DVD and then can be called a criminal for then making a copy of it (for backup purposes) or converting it to another format even with NO intention of distributing it to another person. THAT is what people here are calling BS on. It's just a money grab where the industry wants you to buy the same thing multiple times. This is seen as going completely against "fair use" rules of the past.

quote: Well call me stupid. Here is a better example to why they call it stealing; You walk into Best Buy, take a cd/dvd off the shelf and just walk out the door. So when the cops come and arrest you, you can just tell them "I wasn't stealing, I just took a copy." Just because you don't have a physical copy doesn't make it any less than stealing.

Well since you offer I will call you stupid :-)

Your so called "better example" has nothing to do with piracy but simply tells of transaction that is taking possession of a physical item. I'm pretty sure you get the difference and is just being silly but if not the do look up the word "copy" in a dictionary.

About my second point it seems you did miss what I was on about. If the industry claims a pirate copy equals a loss of say $30 and a shop sells said item for $10 then using the "logic" of the industry that sale would be equal to robbing the industry of $20. Of course this is not how it works but it just highlights one of the ways the industry piracy loss figures are wrong.

Finally. No where in my post did I claim any of my arguments gave me the right to make unauthorized copies. Stop putting words in my mouth!

quote: There is NO excuse for piracy and this is from someone that has... sampled.

This is waaaaay beyond piracy, it's called fascism, they are just using piracy as the new "commie" agent to enforce fascism in our laws, what will be next? jail for all that speak against government sanctioned pandemics? Taking the Swine Flu vaccine at gun point??

We really need to start looking at the bigger picture, this, coming from someone, who has...sampled.

"There is NO excuse for piracy and this is from someone that has... sampled."

Well if you have sampled, then you should know the few reasons that do exist ??

Like say music [hard to find things] f.ex. Demos/Promos/Live Shows or just limited editions and things that are not not sold any longer..

Lets say tv-shows you could probably tivo those or whatever, but its also nice to get 1 file without any commercials and stuff in there.. Im guessing Itunes could do this, but im also guessing that they have DRM in the files.

Then there is a few, not avalible at all for purchasing a legit copy, do you order from some russian bootleger or download online then ??

If Kung Fu The Legend Continues would have been availble on legit DVD's I would have ordered it when I ordered 'Kung Fu'..Anyway there is only crappy VHS rips out there.. so someone thinks that downloading a thing you watched as a kid, and wich makes you zero profit other than watching the show again, in poor quality mind you, should be a criminal act that they can dish out heavy fines or jailtime for, lets hope whoever it comes down to to let this law pass or not, is atleast a little sane!!

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer